Category: Economic development
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Bacon Bits: Higher Ed Updates
Billion dollar baby. You know Virginia Tech has made the big time when its projects hit the $1 billion mark. That’s how much Tech’s innovation campus in Alexandria, which is tied to Amazon’s HQ project, will ultimately cost. The first phase, a 300,000-square-foot academic building, will cost a mind-bending $275 million, reports the Washington Business…
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The Geographic Impact of Automation
by James A. Bacon A handful of megacities have captured a majority of U.S. job growth since the Great Recession and could win 60% of job growth through 2030, according to a July McKinsey Global Institute report. A middle tier of “stable” metropolitan areas and thriving niche cities will continue to see job growth, though…
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Rural Development: the Conventional Wisdom Won’t Cut It
by James A. Bacon Virginia’s rural communities face a hard slog maintaining their local economies in a globalizing world in which their traditional advantages, cheap land and labor, are no longer competitive. That slog looks even harder when leading thinkers are so bereft of fresh ideas. The utter failure to think beyond the conventional wisdom…
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UVa’s Booming R&D Program: What It Means
by James A. Bacon One can debate how well the University of Virginia is serving the interests of students, families and the general citizenry through its aggressive increases in tuition, fees, and other costs of attendance. But there is no denying that Virginia’s No. 2 research university has been successful at attracting outside research dollars.…
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Mayberry on Acid
By Peter Galuszka In a bizarre case for a small Virginia locality, 14 former and current local leaders of Warren County and Front Royal — including the entire Board of Supervisors — have been charged with misdemeanors relating to a major embezzlement case that involves the local economic development authority. The Sept. 24 charges by…
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Repeat After Me: Development of Event Arenas Should Be Left to the Private Sector
by James A. Bacon The big economic-development controversy in the City of Richmond these days revolves around a $1.5 billion plan to redevelop Navy Hill, the name given a large tract of mostly city-owned land downtown now devoted largely to the aging Richmond Coliseum and surrounding parking lots. Everyone agrees that the land should be…
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Block.one Chooses Arlington for U.S. Headquarters
This may be the most fascinating Virginia business story of the year. Block.one, a leader in blockchain technology that originated in Blacksburg but is headquartered in Hong Kong, has announced that it will establish its U.S. headquarters in Arlington County. Virginia is providing a $600,000 grant from the Commonwealth Opportunity Fund to snag the $10…
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Rapid Workforce Deployment: Selling Speed
by James A. Bacon When Stephen Moret was hired to run the Virginia Economic Development Partnership (VEDP) two-and-a-half years ago, one of his main selling points was his accomplishment of creating Lousiana’s FastStart workforce solutions program and building it into the top-ranked workforce development program in the country. Now Moret is assembling a team to…
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Why Is Expanding Broadband Still Such a Problem?
by Peter Galuszka U.S. Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-7th) has drawn lots of attention for her Rural Broadband Summit at Louisa County High School in Mineral on Aug. 17, which got plenty of comment from primarily rural residents unhappy that they can’t get access to quick, reliable Internet service. Good for Spanberger, who beat Republican Dave…
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Bacon Bits: Mostly Good News for a Change
Energy efficiency done right. After investing $2 million over three years to update the energy and water infrastructure of Clark Hall, the University of Virginia calculates that it is saving $75o,ooo a year in electricity bills and $22,000 in water bills — a payback in less than three years. The university replaced 5,000 interior and…
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Blackface, Wayne Newton, and the Top State for Business
Congratulations, Virginia, you’ve clawed your way back to the top of the heap, proclaimed by CNBC to be the Top State for Business in 2019. The honor is well earned. As Wayne Newton said in a nine-minute CNBC piece: “Hi, I’m Wayne Newton, born and raised in Virginia. Now here’s why Virginia has been named…
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Pollution Control Tax Break Not An Incentive
Not every tax policy decision should be made or measured on whether it stimulates more economic activity and thus more taxable revenue for the government. There are things the government should not tax. Yet, returning once again to the well-thumbed June report on manufacturing incentives produced by the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission, that…
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Weldon Cooper Revisited
In a recent post of Steve’s, members of this blog got into an extended discussion of the methodology used by the Weldon Cooper Center at UVa. to evaluate the effect of tax incentives, specifically its projecting the “impact of raising income taxes by the amount exempted.” As promised, I contacted a senior executive at…
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Volvo: A Big Win for Western Virginia
The Volvo Group has announced that it will invest nearly $400 million to expand its Volvo Trucks North American New River Valley assembly operation in Pulaski County. The project is expected to create 777 new jobs within six years. Plans call for a new 350,000-square-foot building that will house truck cab welding operations; expansion of…
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Comrades: Check Out Virginia’s Planned Economy!
There are portions of the recent state audit report on economic incentives that would warm the hearts of retired Soviet planned economy apparatchiks, sitting around their dachas dreaming of the good old days. Case in point: The analysis concluding Virginia’s use of a single sales factor method to tax manufacturers is “moderately effective.”